


don't look down

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Series: i look at you and there's no speech left in me [4]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Implied Underage, M/M, Multi, Self Harm, Trans Luke, a discussion of the absolute horror that were paparazzi during the 2000s, drug and alcohol abuse in further chapters, he eats half cooked meat to self harm which is a BAD IDEA, heaving, i dont understand why rose and julie's mom are two seperate tags, in which bobby is a mutlifaceted person with a lot of issues, in which the world lies in shambles at bobby's feet and somehow he picks it back up again, internalised biphobia, more tags to come, not in the 'traditional' way there will be no cutting., trans Carrie, who is still a fucking dick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:34:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27042058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: Sometimes, when he kisses Luke, he feels like the strings of his guitar, pulled taut across something hollowed, ever tightening until somewhere, something snaps under his fingers and scraped against his nails. There’s a sunset in Luke’s voice and settled warm just under his skin, and Bobby doesn’t kiss his neck. Instead, he presses his lips against the fresh scars on Luke’s skin – half healed, still red against his mouth. Luke laughs, and Bobby’s necklace is a heavy thing on his chest.or:Bobby, spun over nine years, with his sticky hands and his trauma lodged in his throat.
Relationships: Alex/Luke Patterson/Reggie (Julie and The Phantoms), Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Carrie Wilson, Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Julie Molina's Mother, Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Rose, Bobby | Trevor Wilson/Luke Patterson/Reggie, Julie Molina's Mother/Ray Molina, Rose/Ray Molina
Series: i look at you and there's no speech left in me [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015690
Comments: 35
Kudos: 63





	1. 1995: in which the world crumbles

**Author's Note:**

> all these headcanons are mine as well as @beguileds', we watched the show together and came up with these together. This is the first big fic I've done in a while and I have no idea how the upload schedule will be, but I'm hyped to write it. Hope you guys like it!

Bobby aches. Luke lies, smiling and dimpled, with all the world’s wants nestled in his eyes, in his bed, a song on his lips, his hands on Bobby and his skin pulled tight over his glass shard bones. His curtains are pulled closed, and his door is locked behind both their guitars leaning against it, and Luke is smiling, smiling, something soft and blurred against him.

Sometimes, when he kisses Luke, he feels like the strings of his guitar, pulled taut across something hollowed, ever tightening until somewhere, something snaps under his fingers and scraped against his nails. There’s a sunset in Luke’s voice and settled warm just under his skin, and Bobby doesn’t kiss his neck. Instead, he presses his lips against the fresh scars on Luke’s skin – half healed, still red against his mouth. Luke laughs, and Bobby’s necklace is a heavy thing on his chest.

“Thank you”, Luke says, softly, with his mouth pressed against Bobby’s, all teeth and wandering hands. “For letting us stay. I wouldn’t know where else to go.” Luke, with nothing but a backpack and his guitar, Alex with his eyes rimmed red and his throat raw, settled into his parents’ garage with a smile and a kiss on Bobby’s lips, a breath against his neck. Bobby shrugs.

“Sure thing, dude”, he says, and can’t help the way he looks towards the door as if, somehow, it might break under both their hands and crumble at his parents’ feet, leaving his kisses like paint smeared across Luke’s chest. “What are friends for?”

Luke purses his lips. He kisses Bobby, again.

There’s a thread run through the four of them – through the necklaces Luke bought on a whim one day, laughing and breathless and still half floating from a gig, through the rings Alex brought along with him after his parents turned into nothing but rotting bile in all their throats, through the bracelets Reggie wove as Alex paced and paced and paced with a beat under his paper skin. Reggie picks at his bass and Luke picks at his life and Alex and Bobby pick at their feelings until they’re all fraying at the edges, Luke’s lyrics settled in their mouths.

It’s as if the world stands still, inside this garage, with Luke and Alex’ clothes scattered across the floor, flickers of music stuck to the floorboards and the ceiling. Bobby kisses Luke as if, somehow, he will find the beat of his own heart dripping from him, tangles his fingers in Reggie’s hair and drums something like his mother’s voice or the shape of Luke’s scars onto the arms of this couch, in tandem with Alex. There’s a padlock bolted to the door and his parents sneer at their music and Bobby’s lungs are full of tar, sticking to his skin.

Somewhere in his stomach, something ties his ribcage together until he can barely draw a breath, until Luke’s kisses and Reggie’s poetry lie in the pit of him, weighing him down. They play wherever they can, with all their adrenaline and all their lives stretched across stages and dance floors, and Bobby looks at girls with big eyes and bigger mouths and smiles at them until his skin feels brittle and raw under Luke’s fingers. The girls giggle or laugh or kiss him until he’s breathless, until Luke picks at his guitar, until Reggie scowls and Alex’ drums are a loud, frantic thing.

“You don’t have to do that”, says Reggie, with a band shirt still in his hands, with a group of girls squealing behind him, their hands reaching for them all, and he rests his shoulder against Bobby’s. His skin feels hot to the touch, as if Bobby might burst into flames on impact, and he smells of a crackling campfire, still, as if his parents’ gasoline fights had finally settled into his bones. Bobby tucks his necklace underneath his shirt and his heart behind the flutter of his lungs.

“You do it too, bro”, he says.

Luke furrows his brows. His scars are visible through the cutout in his shirt, and Bobby throws his jacket at him. “Put something on, man!”, he calls, with a laugh that stretches; nail scraping; across his teeth. Luke sticks his tongue out at him. Reggie scoffs.

Alex doesn’t say anything at all.

He can still taste the girl’s lip gloss on the tip of his tongue when Luke throws his gig money on the dining room table. There’s a fidget in his bones and a scowl across his face and Bobby _aches_. “Luke”, he says, tries to keep his voice as soft and still as the summer rain outside, but Luke scoffs.

“You don’t have to do it in front of us, you know”, he says, and means every girl that has ever looked at him with the world in her eyes, means every touch and every word that has ever dripped from Bobby’s cracked lips.

Once, when he was still too small to understand the weight of the world and all it contained, the world drowned in something rotten spreading from people like them. Once, when Luke kissed him, with his hands on his jaw, and Reggie in his lap, Bobby thought he might die like that – these lips on his, this soft hair against his hands, and Alex’ laughter like pinpricks on his skin.

He shrugs and takes the money with trembling hands. “Are you gonna stop me?”, he asks, with his voice tied to his throat and his life tied to Luke and his eyes. “We’re musicians, man, we should flirt as much as we want to.”

“Do you?” Luke’s voice stands like a knife on edge, a breath away from clattering to the floor with the blade up. “Do you want to?”

Bobby presses his lips together. “Sure.” He tucks the money into his wallet, heavy and crumpled as it feels. “This covers your guys’ share of the bills, then.”

“Right”, says Luke and purses his lips. He leaves the dining room and Bobby with his heart in his throat.

700$. Half of that goes into his savings. He sighs softly.

Alex is fast asleep and draped across Luke when Bobby sneaks into the garage under the light of the waning moon. His hands are wrapped around Luke’s waist, his lips against his throat, Luke’s hands splayed across his back. And Bobby aches, a creak in his bones, the tar in his lungs something seething, something boiling and splashing against him.

“Luke?”

Luke hums softly. He doesn’t open his eyes. Bobby leans down to kiss him, and Luke cups his jaw with his hands to pull him in. Bobby’s bones splinter underneath his fingertips. “I’m sorry”, he says, and Luke hums.

Rose is beautiful. She’s all curled hair and smiles and her voice in a tilt, and Bobby leans into her, with Luke’s hands wrapped around him, with Luke sticking to him like heated sugar; spun. And with a slap to his arm and a quip to Rose, they leave with laughter and their arms draped across one another. Bobby aches. He smiles at Rose, who shrugs. “So you’re not going with your friends?” She tilts her head.

There’s something cold in Bobby’s bones, splintering into his flesh with every one of her breaths. Bobby shrugs. “Why would I, when I could hang out with you, instead? Plus, I’m a vegetarian, I don’t vibe with street dogs.” He smiles. It feels like something sliced into his skin.

Rose hums. “I just thought maybe you’d like to be with them.”

Bobby laughs, something caught deep in his guts, in between Rose’s smile and the way his hair stands on edge at the tone of her voice. “Sure. They’re big boys, they can eat some hot dogs.”

They die that day. A song short of legends, a wall short of Bobby and Rose’s smile, a world short of this, their performance. And Bobby, with his trembling hands and his glass shard bones is alive, and on this stage, in these lights, with nothing but his guitar and his voice – a shattered thing. He plays the entire set, and doesn’t cry. He grips his guitar with his hands like claws; empty; and he doesn’t cry. He’s alone on that stage, without Luke’s laughter, without Alex’ drumming, without Reggie’s energy or the music around them. The lights are bright and the crowd is a faceless, frothing thing, reaching for him.

They _die_ and Bobby is alive, with Rose’s smile on his skin, with Luke’s frown and Luke’s money in his savings, with the warmth of Sunset Curve on his guitar and in his throat. They die and Bobby doesn’t and the world is backwards, suddenly.

He leaves the Orpheum with cards and money and bile in his pockets and they’ve died and the garage is empty, and Bobby doesn’t cry. There’s something caught in his ribcage, something cold and seething in the shape of Luke’s mouth, to the tune of Reggie’s bass, the beat of Alex’ drums and they’re dead and not yet buried.

He can’t bring himself to go to their funerals, not with their jewellery still strung about him, not with Luke’s music still in his garage, with their instruments and their voices and their lives still settled in this home. Instead, he spends the nights in his room, with his hands in his sheets and his head fuzzed and his stomach an empty expanse wedged between his guts. Instead, he pays for Alex’ funeral with trembling hands.

There’s a breath caught somewhere between the tar of his lungs and his scraping teeth, and he doesn’t cry.

A week after they’ve died, Bobby eats meat again. He sneaks down into the kitchen, with his bare feet on the tiles and his bare hands against the fridge, and he picks out every piece of meat he can find, tosses it into a buttered pan and fries it, until the kitchen smells heavy with it all, until it sits at the back of his throat like something rotting spreading from what is left of Sunset Curve all the way into his flesh.

He eats it all, and after three years of vegetarianism, of Luke’s hands all over him, of Reggie’s teasing, of Alex’ creased brows, and the world in stasis around him, it makes him want to die. The meat lies heavy, like string in his guts, clinging to him like something fouled and long forgotten, the taste of it like Luke’s last breath clinging to his palate.

He throws it all up again.

His arms are trembling and his breath is a heaving thing, alive in his windpipe, alive against these tiles and his glass splintered bones. His throat is raw and split at the back of it all and there’s something empty and gnawing sitting in his guts, pulling ever tighter around the beat of his own heart in his veins. Somewhere inside of him, something is stuck. He’s alive.

Luke’s money sits, untouched and heavy, in his savings account. Bobby is breathing, still, and the meat tastes fuzzy on his tongue. He’s heaving, still.

In the end, he spends New Years wrapped in the scent of the others, sitting on that couch in his garage, with his hands in Luke’s music, with his mouth fitted around Reggie’s poetry, around Alex’ rhythm. He plays each of their songs, until his hands are scraped open with all that has never left this room, and the warmth of Reggie draped across him.

He doesn’t talk to his parents, and doesn’t touch the stack of phone numbers still sitting on the desk, glinting with all they might have become.

Reggie’s parents are stretched thin across debt and three jobs, burning at each other until Reggie smelled of all their gasoline and all their flames. Sometimes, in the mornings, Reggie would lie wrapped with all the others, with his lips on Alex’ cheeks, and his hands pressed against Bobby’s arms, tight and bruising, in his good leather jacket. Luke would kiss him, wordlessly, effortlessly, and tuck himself all around them.

“We will be legends”, he’d say, something soft pooling at all their feet. “They won’t be late on a bill in their lives.” He’d smiled, like something pulled from the hollow of all their bones, soft and careful, and Reggie had smiled, flushed. Bobby had forgotten how to breathe, suddenly. He didn’t touch Luke.

So he takes his money and his life and these two hands, and puts half of it into an envelope to take down to the beach along with all the bile sitting in his throat, strung up by his necklace.


	2. 1996: in which grief is flesh-eating greed

Here’s how to cope with the warm breath in your lungs, with the smell of something once alive on the tip of your tongue, buried underneath the brittle splint of your bones:

This meat is stuck to the roof of your mouth, bloodied and rotten somewhere in the hollow of your guts and wedged underneath your fingernails. Does it taste like that hot dog you never touched, too busy with your hands and your mouth and your glass in shards all across that which does not belong in between those canine teeth? How far can you unhinge your jaws, swallow all that loves you whole until there’s nothing left but your bank account, leaded?

There’s something glued to the bottom of your esophagus, how much will you heave until it’s unstuck? Can you taste your blood at the back of your throat, like iron; warm, dripping down into your lungs? Their colours are seeping from your skin and into this shower drain, see how you stain the enamel with it all, how it gathers at your feet until all that’s left is your bleached porcelain skin and your hands, reaching for things that do not belong to you.

How far do you spool yourself into their music? How deep do you bury yourself under blankets and hoodies and the light of the setting sun? How ragged will you draw your mouth to fit yourself around these lyrics and around these beats, how far into the empty expanse of your chest will you drag these smells before they are eaten by something like citrus, something like bleach sharp in your nose.

Something like your father’s hands, wet with soap.

I wonder, do you cry? Do you hold these clothes and this music clutched to your chest; burst open, with your ribs all tangled? Do you sit there, with your hands frozen; stuck to all that you’ve never let yourself touch? Do you cry until you’re a heaving thing; blotched red, with this salt carved into your cheeks, do you cry until you can barely breathe at all, do you cry until your knuckles are white and your teeth are all jagged; two rows of greed nestled inside your bleeding gums?

Will you sneak into the kitchen, late at night, with all this raw meat lodged in your throat and all this music sitting useless in these sheets and on top of these untouched drums? Is that a bass you can’t play on the floor, and a guitar; bleeding blue; on that couch? How do you spin this music around your own voice? How do you take these lyrics, with both of your hands curled inwards, with your nails hardened and your skin stretched taut across the hollow of your body?

Here’s a scale for you:

On one side – Luke laughs and he kisses you and his eyes crinkle with all this light inside of him. His words sit soft and glistening on your lips, Reggie’s bass; a thrum in your larynx; his head in your lap, his lips something tender against your splitting skin, Alex, with his anxiety in a beat on these drums, their voices molten on your skin. There’s a necklace strung across your throat, something sharp digging into the softness of you, a ring sealed to your bones. Oh, you fool, there’s a bracelet on your wrist, something like lead or perhaps; sugar-spun.

On the other lies your guitar and all this emptiness, the money like lead in your savings, your world in shards at your feet, this music wedged in splinters into your throat and -

Rose’s music is a soft, tender thing. She uses her love like Luke used the scars on his chest, the kisses hidden behind firmly locked doors, the flush of Reggie’s cheeks, the sharp tug of your fingernails, weaves something cherished around her piano; revered. Watch her hands on the keys, her words in a tumble on this paper, and her voice, the way it sits in her throat. She sings of love like she means it, can you feel the way your chest aches when you look at her and can only see Luke, superimposed on her; a doubly lit film?

 _Bro_ , said Luke and meant _I love you_ , tangled in your hair and in this music, all that lies heavy in your stomach. Your lips are bloody. So are your hands. And your throat and your larynx and your voice and your guitar and this garage, how long until your father has drowned it all in the smell of fake lemons, something frothing at the sight of you?

So sit down in front of her and pick at your guitar, still sticky with blood, with your calloused claw-hands as she closes her eyes, throws her head back and sings. In the line of her throat, you can see Reggie’s poetry, his hands wrapped around his microphone stand. In the shape of her lips, you can see Alex’ singing, like something rising from the depths of him. The double lit film flickers around Rose’s edges with each press of her keys.

“Are you gonna keep playing?”, she asks, and – isn’t that just the question?

Will you keep playing, will you keep this iron drowned guitar and all this meat rotting inside of you, will you take Luke’s songs and press them onto vinyl, will you take that stack of cards and call each of these people until you lie, strung up by your wrists, by your throat, by your fingers, in a mess of thread and words not your own?

Will you trace the lines of Rose’s smile, will you re sketch the slope of Luke’s jaw and use his words and his music until you’re dripping with it? Will you look at these hands and the way they’ve hardened into porcelain, brittle; and will you play their music, without them to stand in the light with you? Where will you pull that beat from, how will you feel that bass in your bones again, those lips on your skin again? Will you pick up Luke’s notebook and Reggie’s backpack and all that Alex has long since drummed into the aches between your bones?

You shrug. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Rose tilts her head and the keys of her piano. There’s something stuck in your bloody throat.

Here’s how you cope with your life in your hands and theirs buried somewhere unreachable: You don’t.


	3. 1997: in which something lies on edge somewhere in bobby's callouses

> **From:** lightsoundsrecords.office@hotmail.com  
>  **To:** trevor.wilson@hotmail.com  
>  **Subject:** Re: Sunset Curve Performance Orpheum 1995
> 
> Mr Wilson,
> 
> We are delighted that you reached out to us and are considering a record deal with us. We have listened to your demo and we are very interested in your overall sound, although we do believe it requires some editing still before it reaches the market. We have also noticed that you did not seem to sing the main track in most of the songs. That would need to be changed as you are applying by yourself and not as a cohesive unit.
> 
> However, listening to the demo, a question has been raised that I am sure you will be happy to answer for us. You do not sing lead, and from your description you were playing the rhythm guitar on most of the tracks. Are you capable of playing the main parts? And, if you pardon the question, did you write this music? If you did not, we will have to decline that record deal, unfortunately.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Gina Adams  
> Light Sounds Records Publishing

There’s something sticking to the roof of his mouth, still, when Rose holds herself upright by nothing but his shoulders and her laughter, fizzed. She’s all brown eyes and curls and her accent tilting further and further with each glass that they share, every dare and every truth building like something dripping from her glassy eyes into her flushed cheeks. She looks at him, with the corners of her mouth tilted upwards, with her hands warm and her chest heaving and Bobby –

Bobby doesn’t want to kiss her, anymore. Hasn’t really wanted to kiss her since she’d leaned over her table, their shirt on her shoulder and their music still tangled with her tongue and told him to go after them. Hasn’t really wanted to since touching Luke is something that feels like the meat in his stomach or the tremble of his hands or the fizz of the champagne in his esophagus. Luke’s laughter is still superimposed on top of her, as if he could pull him out of her mouth if only he would dare to reach for him, with his own hands. He doesn’t. Instead, he tilts his glass at Rose.

She giggles. “Your turn, now. Truth or Dare?”

Bobby tilts his head, too. “Truth”, he says, and doesn’t really mean it. “I’m too lazy to get up for a dare.” He drinks the rest of his champagne and reaches for the bottle. Rose laughs.

“Okay”, she says and lets go of his shoulders to curl up on the couch with a hum. “Any question, right?” There’s something in her eyes that Bobby can’t quite place and her friends are giggling, bubble-popped and Bobby’s brain is a sluggish, sick thing.

He fills his glass to the top and shrugs. “Sure. Ask me whatever.” She did just spend five minutes washing out her mouth after her friend – the blonde one, with the blue shirt and the cold hands – had made her bite into a bar of soap for the last dare. So, sure. _Whatever._

Rose clears her throat and raises her glass towards him. Bobby giggles. His hands are still trembling. “Tell us about your best kiss”, she says, and empties her glass. Around her, her friends are laughing, all of them full to the brim with champagne and New Year’s and the world and –

Luke kisses like he sings. Like, if he stops, he will die. Like, if he doesn’t put his whole heart on a plate, still beating and still bleeding and still alive, somehow, someone will rip it out. Luke puts his hands on his throat and his lips are warm and soft and he laughs into the kiss like he does during a set when they’re all burning with so much adrenaline that they could all just fall into each other’s arms, with all this charge between them, all this music stretched between their chests. Bobby kisses Luke like a man drowning. Like, if he stops, he will die.

Reggie kisses like he plays bass. Like the whole world has shrunken down to his hands on Bobby’s cheeks and Bobby’s hands on his hips and Bobby’s breath entangled with his own. Like, if he stops moving he might sink in and never manage to pull himself out. Like, if he stops touching these strings, maybe all of them might tilt over this razor’s edge. Bobby kisses Reggie like a man drowning. Like, if he stops, he will die.

Like, if he stops, they will –

He doesn’t say that. Instead, he squares his shoulders and his champagne and his life at this gaggle of people he barely knows, at Rose’s warm hands and her warm eyes and her music, so much softer than anything he can rip from his dripping guitar, and he lies.

“There was this girl”, he says, grinning, ever grinning, until his cheeks start aching and he can taste Luke’s rage at the tip of his tongue, “at one of my shows. She was really into it, and after we were done with the set, she came to the trailer.” He leans back on the couch. His skin is itching. “Best make out I ever had, hands down.”

“Show-off!” Something hits his shoulder and Bobby laughs, with the feeling of Reggie’s hands on his hips, of Luke’s mouth on his neck, of Alex soft voice against his skin. Rose tilts her head. Her cheeks are flushed. Bobby sticks out his tongue at her.

> **From:** trevor.wilson@hotmail.com  
>  **To:** lightsoundsrecords@hotmail.com  
>  **Subject:** Re: Re: Sunset Curve Performance Orpheum 1995
> 
> Dear Ms. Adams,
> 
> thank you for getting back to me so quickly. I’m glad you’ve enjoyed my demo and its sound. I am aware that it still needs some work and I look forward to working on it with you to polish it up. It is true that I did mostly background singing and supporting guitar for the demo. This was because, at the time of recording, three friends and I were in a band together. This demo was supposed to help us find an agent as a unit. Circumstances have changed, however, and I am now by myself.
> 
> As for your questions: I can play and sing the main part just as well as the supporting guitar and I have no trouble demonstrating that to you. The songs are mine.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Trevor Wilson.

“You know”, Rose says, a few months later when they stand in front of his garage together, her hands buried deep in her pockets, his own cramped around the small key that opens the padlock, “is it really okay if I practice here? Your father didn’t seem too keen.”

Bobby shrugs and rattles with his keys. The padlock doesn’t budge when he pulls on it. “Fuck”, he says, and tries again. His hands are trembling, and his cheeks feel stiff with the cold around them. The padlock clicks softly and he rips it off. “Sure. It’s not like he has much of a say, I pay most of the rent now that I have an agent, he’s just upset that I’m not keeping it as a mausoleum or something. He spent like three months cleaning the entire place top to bottom with one of those stupid citrus things.” He wrinkles his nose. “So I’m sorry for the smell in advance.”

“Ah yes, Mr Wilson has found himself a big hotshot agent.” Rose laughs, and promptly starts coughing when he drags the door to the side. “Oh my _God_ ”, she says, and pulls her scarf up to her nose. “Do you have windows in here? Holy shit.” The garage doesn’t smell like Luke anymore, or like Reggie. It doesn’t remind Bobby of Alex’ panicked pacing or Luke’s excited rambling or Reggie working through something with his brows creased and Bobby’s lips pressed against his temple. Instead, it just smells like dust and lemons and Rose’s perfume.

He smiles at her. “I told you.”

“It’s terrible! Did he just pour the whole thing over the couch?” Rose is still laughing, and holding onto one of the chairs still scattered around the space. Bobby grins at her, all teeth.

“I can’t tell you what he thinks happened in here. But apparently it requires at least two bottles of detergent and gloves.” He laughs, and Rose sits down on the chair, her laughter still like something from behind glass, something like her music – or maybe Luke’s. Somehow, having Rose around lifts some of the taste from his tongue.

(At night, he stands in the kitchen by the pan, and tosses the chicken in butter for all of a minute. He washes the pan and his hands and his aching cheeks until he can barely feel his skin anymore and then he eats the meat until he is filled to the brim with it, until he lies, heavy and heaving and with Luke’s teeth in his neck, in bed, or maybe with Luke’s words in his mouth in front of a microphone in a recording studio, or maybe with Reggie’s trauma strung across his guitar or maybe –

He throws up.)

Somehow, Rose makes him laugh. His hands are trembling, and the soft fizz that sits somewhere in his throat has stopped. He takes a breath, something shaky and cold in his windpipe.

“D’you wanna drink anything?”

“Like, what? Soda?”

Bobby huffs through his nose. “Sure.”

Rose tilts her head. “It’s so beautiful in here”, she says softly. “A piano would fit right here”, she points to the middle of the room, right by the windows. “Playing with the rising sun must be heavenly.”

Bobby shrugs.

It goes platinum. Bobby goes platinum, by himself, sick to his stomach, and with sticky hands, with his guitar iron filled, with Luke’s words dripping from him like honey or maybe all that he swallows because he can’t fit his mouth around it all, and like that, he goes platinum.

He goes platinum, and as soon as his agent tells him, buzzed as his mind feels, sluggish as his legs feel, he spends the night curled up on that couch, dripping with lemon and blood and bile and the sound of the four of them still tangled somewhere in its threads. He lies there until he can barely feel his fingers anymore, until his throat is raw and his cheeks feel like they might be bleeding, until his voice is wet with tears.

The dial plate stutters under his calloused fingertips, and Rose picks up after a breath.

“Congratulations”, she says, muffled by her hand or maybe the receiver, and Bobby laughs softly.

“You, too.” He presses the receiver between his shoulder and his cheek, and buries his hands in his pockets. “Your new album’s doing really well. Did you get the proceeds yet?”

Rose hums. “Yeah, just got through last week. Why?”

“Well.” He takes a breath. It’s shaky, somehow, and stuck halfway between his mouth and his lungs. “Mine came in as well, and I want to look into buying a place. So we’d move out of here, and the owner wants to sell. I’m sure I can talk to them about it if you want that piano by the windows.”

Rose on the other end of the line stays quiet. Bobby can hear her breathing and the way it settles in her bones, and he grabs the receiver with his shaking hands. “It’s yours if you want it.”

“Oh my God”, says Rose.


End file.
